Tagging As A Communication Device: The Impact of Communities on Transforming Tag Information

Summary

The panel will discuss tagging of documents where a particular vocabulary, language or classification is used for communication. At the individual or conceptual level, tags avoids some of the issues of fossilized terms or meanings, but at the context, language or category level, the meaning must be of a more community or social network nature. There is even a ‘tag’ to ‘tag’ relationship where the “to” object may either be a user or information. Therefore, tags as a language can be tailored to improve communication accuracy for the object. The panel will attempt to show how tagging can indicate an appropriate semantics given the user’s understanding of the information's context, and why one tag was chosen over another.

The topic areas proposed for this conference panel are: Ontology of Tags: Do users communities use ontologies and tagging both as

metadata for information? Metadata use: Do small communities have a stable use of terminology? Tag Clouds: What did I mean by that tag the 1st time I used it? Is this how I mean to use this tag? Tags as Communication Device: Is tagging an activity to integrate an individual's past, present and (anticipated) future experience?

Questions that will be discussed among panelists and with the audience will focus on looking at tags as a way of communicating information between users. Within a community, is it possible to decide whether to interpret a tag within the context of the document or just treat it as a primary key or keyword, and what are the feasible/required mechanisms that enable that decision?